Writing to Reconnect

As a young adult I used to write a journal.  I loved it.  I used to find a beautiful book to write in and a black ink pen.  Being a complete romantic I would seek out lovely locations to write in, under particular trees that I loved, or at the beach, but mostly at home in my room.  I remember once, travelling around Italy with some friends in my early twenties, to come back from a day scootering around the Chanti region to find one of my precious journals dripping wet in my tent after a torrential downpour.  The ink had run on at least three pages and I was devastated – those words, gone forever!  I still have a box of these journals now, on top of the wardrobe in my bedroom.

As I grew older I stopped writing.  Life happened. Things changed, my student days ended and so did some of the freedom and creativity I had found there. 

The writing stopped.  Sometimes I would go back and try to write again.  I would buy myself a beautiful journal and an ink pen, but it did not work.  It felt awkward, vulnerable, scary.

What should I write about?  What might come out?  I do not feel like I recognise this voice. Who is that person who is showing up on the page?  She scares me, am I her, is she me?  She seems to encompass all the parts of me that I am shutting down in order to get on in the world.  I don’t like this.  I feel like a fraud.  I have nothing in me.

There were a few times over those twenty years where I tried to write but I would read it back and cringe, that raw voice sounded so alien and just too open, honest and vulnerable.  I’d close the book, hide it away and forget about it. 

 As an academic, during recent years working in a university setting I have been able to write in that context, but that felt so much easier as it was much less personal and more objective, it was safe and boundaried and not vulnerable and risky.

 So, what changed for me with my personal writing?

When did I step back into that place of open rawness and allow my own self-expression again?  When did I start writing words that didn’t make me cringe and want to sink back into myself?

 The change happened after my very first session with a coach.

I came to coaching myself as I had been toying with the idea of getting a coaching qualification for a number of years.  This was based on my realisation that what I loved so much about my work as an applied drama practitioner and an educator was seeing people gain agency and confidence in themselves and transforming their lives in incredible ways 

Hmmm, I should train as a coach… as I have been working in a similar way for so long and transformation is what lights me up and makes my heart sing!

Around the same time another applied drama practitioner and academic had also made the move into coaching and when I saw that she was reaching out for clients I thought it would be perfect for me: If I want to be a coach, I should have coaching right?

I rocked up at our first online meeting, with absolutely no real idea about how coaching worked and what my role in it was, I just wanted some help and guidance.  During this first coaching session it became apparent that I was dealing with feelings of being stuck, wanting to make changes to my life but feeling unable to, and as we went deeper my story became one of a deep lack of self-belief, fear of the opinions of others and a continual sense of striving for something in order to make me feel complete.  So, when my coach suggested to me that this was what she was hearing, and did I consider that I was enough just as I was, I stopped in my tracks.

 Am I enough?

I am enough.

What does enough look like?

All of this time I have been enough?

I don’t need to do anything to make myself enough?

My mind was blown (and my heart and my gut probably sighed a big sigh of relief!)

For years I had been running to stand still and in that moment, I stopped in my tracks for the first time in a very long time and started to really look at myself.  Honestly look at myself, even the raw and uncomfortable bits.  You see, good coaching provides this wonderful space where you can really tune into yourself!

These coaching sessions provoked small changes in my life.  I started to sit still and meditate; I made notes of things I knew about me and put them in places around the house where I would see them; I would be in middle of an overthinking moment of building anxiety and I would remember – I am enough!

This process started my love affair with myself and my love affair with coaching, and slowly, over time, the writing crept back in, not some intense scary intruder anymore, but like an old friend quietly tipping up in the chair next to me. 

Now writing is a place of comfort, a place where I get to show up fully.  It feels like coming home, a relief and an outpouring, a place where I can’t ‘get it wrong’, a place of learning and deep self-realisation, a place for me, all of me.

The only problem I have now is once I start, I struggle to stop!  Maybe it’s all those years of stuckness, but now my writing feels like a never-ending stream of expression, inner wisdom and knowing. 

Writing is a real place for me to reconnect.

If this resonates with you and you would like to try writing to reconnect then I have created a beautiful resource to support you. My 10 Days of Writing to Reconnect resource is FREE when you subscribe to my newsletter. The resource takes you through a simple 10 day programme that I promise will support your writing practice and open up new insights as you seek to reconnect with yourself through writing!

Yes please, I want to download 10 Days of Writing to Reconnect!

(By the way, my coach at the time was Dr Sheila Preston who I still work with now as part of her wonderful Thriving Facilitators Community)